Re: Science versus religion fnord

On 2009-07-06, snex <xens@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 6, 3:52 pm, Garamond Lethe <cartographi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Let's start cleaning this up a bit.

<snip>

If religion was as much of a failure as you (mistakenly) think,
it would have been abandonded long ago.  For what people want
it to do, it works.  

bull***. by your argument, *all* failed ideas should be abandoned.

And eventually they are. Better ideas drive out worse ideas.

but they clearly arent. astrology still exists. "alternative" medicine
still exists.

Then you need to propose a mechanism by which bad ideas remain in the
population. My explanation is those ideas aren't nearly as harmful
as you'd like to think.

So, what's your explanation? Atheism has been around a long time.
Atheists are still in the minority. Why is this?

<snip>

"god exists." why do religious people pretend to know this?

I don't know of any religious people who pretend to have that
knowledge, but if I run across one I'll be sure to ask for you.

<snip>

im not the one using faith.

You most certianly are.  Your knowledge isn't tentative and is not susceptible
to refutation.  It is not based on observation or experience.  That's faith,
and that's all you have.

bull*** liar. i just told you i dont use faith.

That's another article of your faith. Note how you're not able to make a
rational argument that you don't use faith. Note how you're not able to
provide evidence that your arguments are not based on faith.

It's just a simple assertion, evidence free and not susceptible to evidence.

In other words, faith.

to continue insisting
that i do, despite the fact that you have no access to my mind or how
i arrive at conclusions, is dishonest.

I have plenty of your conclusions and am able to judge them by the
evidence you provided. As there is not evidence, that's not a
particularly onerous task.




i asked you how religious people know
something.

Tradition, revelation, intuition and practicality.

those are not ways of knowing.

How do you know this? An epistemology textbook you picked up? Your
studies of Augustine? That's where I got this list.

So unless you'd like to provide a cite to the contrary, I'll put this
down as another statement of your faith.

<snip>

anything dealing with truth must be able to offer
reliability, or it is not in fact truth at all.

Your faith is showing.  If you'd like to exclude "Bach was a great artist"
from the set of true statements because you are unable to measure its
reliability, then may I gently suggest that religion is the least of your
problems.

prove its a true statement.

After you. You asserted that "anything dealing with truth must be able
to offer reliability, or it is not in fact truth at all."

Please prove that this statement is true and provide its reliability
measure.

(Assuming this isn't another statement of your faith, of course.)



(Have you taken any college classes at all?)

No answer? (No, I didn't expect one. And I have a pretty reliable
guide to what the answer would be.)

<snip>

I mostly hang with Quakers, Unitarians and Buddhists.  I don't find
them to be particularly mysterious.  None of them make claims about
God that they expect me to believe.

Perhaps you're hanging out with the wrong crowd.

you can find them
gathered together every sunday in buildings called "churches."

Not Buddhists, no.  Quaker gatherings are called "meetings".  I'm not
sure if a Unitarian would admit to attending a "church" or not.  I'll
ask.

so now you are going to deny that churches exist,

Why would I?

or that people fill
them every sunday?

No need to do that either. It's also not working very well as a
diversionary tactic.

are you seriously going to pretend that you are
being honest here?

I'll admit to pretending that you could have understood my point.

When ever you use the phrase "religion does X", I can usually
(and trivially) falsify it by pointing out that Quakers, Unitarians and
Buddhists don't do X.

And then you stomp your feet some more.

If you limited your claims to "Mainline American Protestent churches
do X", then you'd be free and clear. But while that's a defensible
argument, it's not the one you want to make.

If it helps, you might want to write down "Quakers, Buddhists and
Unitarians" on a sticky note and put it on your monitor. That way,
whenever you're tempted to write "religion", you can be reminded to
check to see if these religions believe what you're about to say
they believe.

Of course, you'll need to find out what they believe first in order
for this to be effective. Otherwise, you're back to making statements
of faith.





no
doubt there are at least 20 of these buildings within a 1 mile radius
of you if you live in any major american city.

Have you ever visited America?  Within one mile of me there is a
computer science department, a biology department, a mathematics department,
a liquor store, a tatoo parlour, a bad pizza joint and a mediocre hamburger
joint.  

and how many churches?

None. I thought that was clear.

you want to pretend its zero, but you know
nobody would ever buy that lie.

Have you ever visted America?



its hard to imagine
that theyve gone unnoticed to you for so long.

It's also hard to imagine that you can't manage to come up with a
single concrete example and instead resort to mythical churches that
are more common than toadstools.

mythical churches? give me any address in any major city and ill list
the ones within a mile. your dishonesty is appalling.

I verified this with google maps.

183rd St. SE, Renton WA (although it may be considered to be in Seattle,
hard to tell from the map).

W. Broadway and S. 75th Ave, Phoenix AZ.

River Falls Dr. and S. Precinct Line Road, Dallas TX.

Not that hard, although easier where cities have more sprawl.





Although I will say that people who rely on faith as much as you do
tend to have problems with concrete thinking.

it takes real faith to claim that there are no churches near you.


Faith is required for the claim:

"no doubt there are at least 20 of these buildings within a 1 mile radius".

You had no evidence of this, and there was evidence to the contrary
to be had for the looking.

But you do have faith, so you had no problems saying what you did.

<snip>

So I don't think your hypothesis holds up.  This doesn't mean that
*you* are a moron, it just means you're not particularly competent.

says the liar claiming he has never seen a church!

Have you noticed that when you can't refute what I said, you start
making up things that you wish I had said?

<snip>

which of these fields makes claims about how or why the universe
exists, or what really happens after you die? only religion does, as
far as im aware.

And this is very informative of the extent of your awareness.  Not
so much religion.

What do Unitarians claim about how and why the universe exists?

What do Quakers think really happens after you die?

Go ahead and look up the answers.  Don't guess.  I'll be here
when you get back.

are you asserting that religions dont make such claims,

Why would I? That's just as stupid as saying religions do make those
claims (which, not coincidentally, is your claim).

Having a modicum of competence, I'm not only asserting, but able to
provide evidence that there exist religions that do not make those
claims.

That's all I need to refute you.

<snip>


Religious claims are usually handled in a non-scientific manner.  So
are claims about art, music, literature, politics, cooking, and a whole
host of other human activities.  We manage to get along pretty well.

religious claims, unlike claims in those other fields, are claims
about the way reality actually is.

Bach, in reality, actually is better than Duran Duran.

prove it.

Wow. You really don't get this.

Proof is appropriate for certain legal and mathematical claims. Proof is
not appropriate for scientific, religious and aesthetic claims. I'm
afraid your faith has led you astray again.

(This is really basic stuff, btw. You should have picked this up in
high school.)

<snip>

Tradition, revelation, intuition and practicality.

those cant determine the answer. there is only one correct answer, and
none of those methods provide it.

And how do you know there's only one correct answer? That's right!
Faith again. Well, keep guessing, you're bound to get something right.



Although in your case, it would probably be best to let someone else
make the decision for you.  You've got a great handle on revelation,
but you've really neglected the rest.

this isnt a matter of personal preference.

Why not?

because what happens after i die just happens, regardless of what i
want, moron. the same is true for me stepping in front of a bus. i
might want the bus to crumple around me, leaving me unharmed, but this
will not happen. the bus will kill me.

There's evidence for the second belief. Any evidence for the first?
No? Well, I'll mark it down to faith then.


the fate of my
actual soul is (allegedy) at stake here.

If you believe that then you should act accordingly.

then show me how to derive the correct way to act.

That is the concern of the branch of philosophy called ethics. Most
established religions have workable systems (if only because those
religions with unworkable systems don't tend to last long). Purely
philosophical approach have tended to work less well, perahps because
they need far more background knowledge to be understood. There are
also evolutionary/biological approaches to ethics, but these are
still in their infancy.

Your ethics as they stand leave a lot to be desired (and I'm judging
this based on your posts). While I think that the ethics espoused by
Quakers in particular has a lot to recommend it, it does take a level
of maturity that you frankly don't have yet. You might be more
comfortable with a more structured faith like Roman Catholicism.

religions all claim
they have the correct ways to act,

Ooops, there you go with "religions all (!) claim" again.
Unitarians wouldn't go that far. So, once again, your faith-based
claim is trivially falsified.

(I keep hoping you'll get the hang of this, but you do have a
penchant for making the same dumb mistake over and over and
over again.)

but they all contradict each other
and offer no way to resolve which one is correct.

Again, "all" is easily falsified by my old standby's the
Unitarians. They see very little if any contradiction between
different religions and (although I would have to check on this)
have methods for resolving those conflicts.

(Yes, the same dumb mistake.)



the god of religion A isnt
going to greet me at the gates of heaven and say "well i clearly told
you to follow religion A, but you personally preferred religion B, so
come on in!" if religion A is correct about what happens when i die.

Which religion would this be?  Please be specific and don't cite
mythical churches.

fundy thinking always prevents entertaining of hypotheticals, doesnt
it?

I've not found that to be the case. However, sloppy thinking prefers
gross overgeneralizations to facts.

why cant you address the situation?

The situation of being surrounded by 20 invisible churches? The
situation of all religions doing something that only you can detect?

Have you noticed that you've never been able to say something along
the lines of "Faith X makes statement Y in their religious creed
that can be found at URL Z."

You know why that is? Because you've never studied what any faith
says.

It's really easy to argue with ignorant people. All they can do
is guess, and they guess wrong much more often than they guess right.

<snip>

i must have missed it. where is the proof that god exists?

Looks like someone snipped it.  I wonder who that might be.

no proof was actually presented

None that you could understand, no. That was intentional on my
part. Well done, you missed the point.

<snip>

Do you agree that all knowledge is tentative?  And that what follows from
this is that justification using this knowledge must be tentative as well?

if no knowledge is reliable, why do science?

*Because* no knowledge is reliable, we do science.

Science is a very efficient way of reducing, but not eliminating, error bars.
It's also great fun and (sometimes) pays well.

its a pointless waste of
time if we cant rely upon it.

Then let me invite you to not rely on it.


<snip>

Does astrology provide an evolutionary advantage?  Not that I'm aware
of.

it gets astrologers laid. thats an evolutionary advantage.

Not always, but it might have helped Kepler.  Do you know of any
evolutionary advantage for non-astrologers?

the same types of evolutionary advantages for the non-religious.

If that were true, I would expect to find archeological evidence of
non-religious early cities and nations. I don't know of any. Do you?

It looks like the populations with the capacity for religious belief
had an evolutionary advantage over those populations without that
capacity (assuming you'd like to make the argument that two such
populations existed; I don't know of any evidence for that, either.)

<snip>

people who believe in astrology often get
together to form communities of like-minded believers in astrology.

Cite, please.

if you arent aware of how to find astrological societies

Assume I'm not. Cite, please.

<site>

Does astrology correlate with a longer, happier life?  I'm not aware
of any studies that show this.

did you look?


<snip>

Let me know if you'd like a copy.

that study has nothing to do with the issue
, dishonest moron. it tests
the astrological sign of the participants, not whether or not they
believed in astrology. try again.

Ok, since you don't have access to google, I don't mind doing
your legwork for you.

O Lillqvist, M Lindeman. "Belief in astrology as a strategy for
self-verification and coping with negative life-events".
European Psychologist, 1998

M Lindeman, K Aarnio. "Superstitious, magical, and paranormal
beliefs: An integrative model". Journal of Research in Personality,
2007

And a book:

_Six impossible things before breakfast: the evolutionary origins
of belief_. L Wolpert, 2007.








What was your point?

the justifications to believe in astrology are the exact ones used to
believe in religion. you cant respect one without respecting both.

no answer i see...


Well, if you really want me to point out the obvious fallacy....

The justifications are not the same. If nothing else, there are no
"astrological societies". False premise, conclusion fails.


is belief in astrology justifiable?

It doesn't look like it.  Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

it is by YOUR definition.

No.  By your definition, lack of evidence is evidence for a position.
(One might go so far as to say that the lack of evidence is required
to hold a position.  That would explain your allergy to evidence.)

no moron, i have never held to this idea. i keep reminding you of
this, but you keep lying about me anyway. why?

I'm going off of your actions, not what you prefer to believe about
yourself.

For example, you haven't provided a single citation in this exchange.
Your beliefs are simply not based on evidence. That's fine, and it's
something you have in common with many religious people. But it's
disingenuous of you to claim otherwise.



By my defintion, lack of evidence means that a position probably
should not be held.  There is evidence for the benefits of religion.
I know of no evidence for the benefits of astrology.  I had hoped
you might be able to offer some.

if lack of evidence means that a position should not be held, then you
should stop defending religious people.

They have evidence. They live longer, they're happier, they report
being more fulfilled. They have evidence they there's an evolutionary
advantage to a belief in god.

They don't need me to defend them. What they have works for what they
want it to do.


<snip>

like you? dont joke, youre a known liar.

Remember, if you can't attack the argument, attack your opponent.

you just attacked me, moron. the very sentence i replied to was an
attack on my competence.

I think it was a pretty fair summary, don't you? After all, I've
provided evidence that you're not competent to make this argument.

Would you like me to review it?

You, on the other hand, are reduced to calling me names when you
run out of argument (and that tends to happen a lot). It's not
effective, but I guess it does make you feel better.

.

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